A security expert is warning that the anti-theft camera systems now deployed at Home Depot and other major retailers could converge with doorbell cameras and smartphones into a single, centralized surveillance database tracking Americans everywhere they go.
Bill Stanton, president of the security firm QVerity Secure, laid out the scenario in an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun. Flock Safety cameras, license-plate-reading devices already installed in retail parking lots, are just one node in a growing web of cameras, Stanton said. The danger is not any single device. The danger is what happens when the data streams merge.
Stanton compared the potential outcome to the Borg, the hive-mind villains from Star Trek who absorb individuals into a single collective consciousness. His point was not science fiction. It was a warning about a surveillance architecture that, in his view, is assembling itself piece by piece while most Americans pay no attention.
Flock Safety's camera network reads license plates in store parking lots, giving retailers and law enforcement a tool to track vehicles linked to theft. Home Depot is among the chains that have adopted the system. But Stanton argued the technology's real trajectory goes far beyond catching shoplifters.
He told The U.S. Sun that the next step is integration, linking Flock cameras with Ring doorbell cameras, phone cameras, and other networked devices into a single repository.
"Someone will be able to network between the doorbell cameras, as we see with Ring cameras, with phone cameras."
That convergence, he said, would give whoever controls the database a near-complete picture of a person's daily life. Where you go, what you buy, who you spend time with, all of it logged and searchable.
The practice of scanning plates at Home Depot and Lowe's and feeding the data into a wide-open database is already raising questions about how much information retailers collect and who gets access to it.
Stanton did not limit his concern to government overreach. He described scenarios in which bad actors, criminals, corporate manipulators, or anyone with access, could exploit a centralized surveillance feed for personal gain.
The simplest example, he said, is a burglar who knows you left home:
"I know where you are, what you're doing, what you're buying, who you're with, right? So as little as, 'okay he's out bowling, I could rob his house physically while he's out bowling.'"
He went further, warning that surveillance data could be weaponized for financial manipulation, sending people misleading stock tips designed to benefit whoever controls the information. The scheme Stanton described would turn a person's tracked habits into a tool for extracting money from them.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have started to take notice. A bipartisan push to cut funding for Flock Safety cameras and require warrants for their use reflects growing unease about a surveillance apparatus expanding with little public debate.
What makes Stanton's warning sharper than a standard privacy complaint is his insistence that the surveillance state he describes is not being imposed by force. Americans are building it themselves, buying Ring doorbells, carrying smartphones, shopping at stores with license plate readers, and handing over data without a second thought.
"If you're a Star Trek fan, [it's] like the Borg, you know, 'we are one,' where all of these data streams are coming together into one central database and then going from there, how it influences us a culture."
He returned to that metaphor later, stripping away the fiction: "We're willingly becoming the Borg."
The comparison is not subtle. The Borg erase individual identity. Every member of the collective sees what every other member sees, and no one opts out. Stanton's argument is that networked surveillance technology is building something structurally similar, not through coercion, but through convenience and indifference.
Retailers beyond Home Depot are part of the trend. License plate cameras at Walmart, Target, and other big-box chains have drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates who say shoppers have no idea their plates are being logged every time they pull into a parking lot.
Stanton did not dismiss the security value of the cameras outright. He acknowledged the obvious question: "From a safety and security position, there's the obvious 'how does it keep us safe?'"
But he followed that immediately with the question he considers more important: "But then there's the subtext of it. How could it be used against us?"
His concern is that the technology is advancing faster than the public's ability to understand it or lawmakers' ability to regulate it. He described the gap between capability and oversight as the core problem, saying technology is "outpacing our ability to process it."
The result, in Stanton's framing, is an ant farm. "We're almost like an ant farm where we're all working as one," he said. "That could be good in some ways. That could also be very scary."
Meanwhile, the question of how retailers handle the data they collect is drawing legislative attention beyond the camera issue itself. New York's proposed surveillance pricing ban reflects a broader push to put guardrails on how companies use shopper data, a fight that is still far from settled.
Stanton left his warning open-ended: "Wherever the imagination can go, that's where we could take this." That is either a call to action or a concession, depending on whether anyone with the power to set limits is paying attention.
Several unanswered questions hang over the issue. What data, exactly, do Flock Safety cameras collect at retail locations? Which retailers besides Home Depot use the system? And what legal framework, if any, governs how long the data is stored or who can access it? Stanton raised the alarm. He did not claim to have the answers.
The quiet deployment of license plate readers at Home Depot and Lowe's that feed data directly to police underscores how far the infrastructure has already spread, often without the knowledge of the shoppers whose movements it records.
When the surveillance net is built one convenience at a time, the people inside it rarely notice until it is already closed, and by then, the only question left is who holds the controls.